Standoff between police and rioters, Croydon, London, 2011. Wikicommons/ Raymond Yau. Some rights reserved.As the soul searching sets in after the Paris attacks, pundits will zoom in on France’s policies towards immigrants and minorities. But a look into history cautions against hasty blame games.
As more details are emerging about the perpetrators of the Paris attacks, much of the discussion in the coming weeks will unavoidably focus on the alleged shortcomings of integrating immigrants and minorities into European societies. Similarly to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo earlier this year, it turns out that some, or even most, of the terrorists were born and raised in Europe.
This realization should forbid simplistic confounding of Syrian refugees and terrorism; of the kind found in Niall Ferguson’s demagogic analogy between contemporary Europe and the fall of the Roman Empire allegedly overrun by “barbarians.” Yet the perpetrators’ European upbringing does urge a closer look at the social situation in France’s infamous banlieues once more.
